Miles And Miles And Miles
by PoppieJoy
Summary: I swear, in that moment, I'd have done anything for you. In that one short single second I noticed the purple handwriting, if you had taken my hand and asked for me back, I would have said yes. Taken your hand back and said yes, over and over and over again. Until you couldn't doubt me anymore.


**Usually, I write when I'm happy and I'm okay. However, this one came from a place where I am really **_**not **_**okay. Therefore, I apologise incredibly quickly at how angsty this is. I'd like to think I put a bit of hope in it for you all, but after everything, I really just want my half of the story to be told.**

**Enjoy as much as you can!**

**...**

They were too late.

The package felt like more than just a few pieces of paper and some pictures; the contents didn't justify the weight. Your words and your paintings and your perfect handwriting should have been more than what they were. What they are.

But they're not.

I knew from the moment I saw the stamp. Blaring out at me like some loud, garage music, framed with the tightest of circles, the letters **NEW YORK **standing out like Rachel Berry in a sea full of hipsters, I knew. It had been getting better until you sent the package.

I'd stared at it for a solid twenty minutes, transfixed in a silence I thought only a spell could curse. But of course, with you, it was never really just _staring_. I think I must have been studying it, my eyes dancing with the dips and the bends that must have been engraved on the brown paper, during its little journey.

I say little, but really, it was more a case of far, far away. A long, long journey. Miles, and miles, and miles, and miles.

I'd noticed the way you'd gone over the pencil written address with a purple felt tip pen and it had simultaneously made me incredibly angry and incredibly submissive. I swear, in that moment, I'd have done anything for you. In that one short single second I noticed the purple handwriting, if you had taken my hand and asked for me back, I would have said yes. Taken your hand back and said yes, over and over and over again. Until you couldn't doubt me anymore.

But you didn't. And I'm very happy that you didn't.

You say you're studying Medicine at NYU, and unfortunately, I can't help but feel really proud of you for finally doing what you know you want to do. And it upsets me that I don't like that I'm proud of you. It shouldn't be like that; I love you, and I should be proud of you, whatever situation we find ourselves in.

But that was the only glimpse you gave me into your life now. The rest of your package involved love letters and small declarations of adoration and_ that_ upsets me even more.

The postcard of NYU was the worst. It was the first thing I read and the first thing I nearly ripped up.

_To the loser who owns a piece of my heart_, you wrote, in your perfect, beautiful handwriting.

(I will never fall out of love with your handwriting.)

_From your one and only._

There are two things seriously wrong with this postcard. Besides the fact it shows a picture of a place where not both of us are settled, it also states two very important things where this relationship was wrong and will always be wrong.

Number 1: You write how I only have one piece of your heart... I don't want just _one _piece of your heart – _I want it all_. I want every little crevice, and valley, and hole and surface I can touch. I want the garden of your heart, to walk through it and smell the roses and the buttercups and daffodils and the poppies, and to sing in the soul of it, skipping recklessly through the deep red sunflowers, with your hand nestled achingly perfect in mine, giggling and laughing at how beautiful everything is. I want the happiness and the loneliness, the joyfulness and the sadness. I want all the hidden stories in all the hidden cracks of your heart. I want all the shattered shards in every place it broke, like mine has, the sorrow and the heartache and all the spaces in between. I want the background of your heart, its history, where it came from, where it's going. I want its desires, its longings, its future, the innocence of its childhood and the wisdom of its age. I want the smell of its breath, the taste of its lips, and the sight of its eyes. I want it all. I don't just want a piece of it... I want the whole thing.

Was that ever too much to ask? Especially when you had – and still, possibly, have – the absolute whole of mine?

Number 2: You then proceed to sign it as my 'one and only'. And really, I cannot tell you how long I blinked at that, in an ocean of disbelief. Because, absolutely, _yes_! Yes! You _are_ my one and only! And you _knew _that and I'm pretty sure you _still _know that... Sadly.

(Sad, sad, sad.)

You, ever since I first laid eyes on you, have been my one and only. And I don't know what you were thinking when everything went wrong, but how could you just abuse that? How, after everything you and I have been through, the months of pain and waiting and falling in love, just push that all away?

Was I ever your one and only too?

I don't know how many girls you've been with since we've been apart. We got through the first one and we got through the second. But I can't do this anymore. I can't stay here, in Lima, and know that you're spending your awesomeness on girls who know _nothing _about you. Especially just because you're lonely.

You don't think I'm lonely too?

You're beautiful, Santana. You're so, so beautiful, and with every sun rise and with every twitch of my eyes as they wake up from yet another sleepless night, I find myself going crazier and crazier.

And not the falling in love kind of crazy. Because if this is what falling _out _of love feels like, it sure as hell is worse than the confusion of falling _in_ love with a _girl_.

I'm smart when it comes to you. I know you, well... I want to say I know you like the back of my hand, but really... I have _no _idea what the back of my hand even feels like, let alone looks like. Why is that even a saying? Like, do people look at the backs of their hands on a regular basis or something? I've never looked at the back of my hand. Have you ever looked at the back of your hand? Only when I read the class directions and my locker number you used to write on there for me during middle school and later high school, or when I used to glance at the scribbled love notes and doodles you spent many a happy hour lazing on my hand in the depths of History class senior year, did I ever look at the back of my hand. And even then, I can't remember if it was my left hand or my right hand. It's a dumb saying anyway, much like me.

No. What I am trying to say, is that when it comes to you and talking about you and being around you, I'm smart. I'm really smart. I can say things and you are the _only_ person who won't think I'm ill if I say something a little bit clever.

But that's just it. You're spending all your time now, giving yourself to these other girls and I hate it. Mostly I hate it, because it's not me. But honestly? I hate it even more that none of them know how lucky they are to get that. To get you. None of them have any idea at all how _lucky _they are to be given your heart and to be given your life.

Falling in love with you was concurrently the easiest and the absolute hardest thing I've ever been through. I've loved you from the moment you spoke your first few words to me. You said, "Oh you've scratched your leg, let me see."

I still have that scar. And I'm not sure how I'm meant to feel about that.

You've always cared for me, and you know that you're the only one who knows how to take care of me. You've said that yourself. But sitting and waiting all day long for just a simple message from you and never getting anywhere until I'm falling asleep is _exhausting. _You met someone else, you spent most of your time with them and getting to know them and it's not surprising you began liking them.

But you can't lie to me anymore. Maybe I deserve that, maybe I don't. But I know that out there, in this crazy stupid world, there is someone who will be willing to wait for me.

Willing to fight for me.

Because when you fight so much for someone's attention, eventually, you won't want it anymore.

I catch myself all the time, reminding myself of things I need to tell you. And then I remember that I can't and that really hurts. I want to tell you how Marley cut her finger on a pair of scissors as we sewed our costumes together for sectionals yesterday and how she giggled so very innocently, "I'm not a very good scissorer." I want to tell you how it was the first time I've laughed so hard in a really long time. I want to tell you how I can no longer wear your necklace because when I dance down the corridors at school, it bashes against my boobs and it distracts me for a few seconds and how it makes me think of your palms being there instead and how they never will be ever again. I want to tell you how all week, I've had a pain right underneath my belly button, halfway between tender and sharp and how much it hurts after I pee and how I have to go to the doctors on Monday because it's not been getting any better. I want to tell you things I can't tell anybody else, because with you, I'm totally free and totally me.

I want to tell you how much I'm still in love with you and how I have to physically tell myself, "no", every time I go to call you. Message you. Skype you.

No, no, no.

I can't be friends with you until a long way away because I'm pretty sure if you turned up on my doorstep right now, collapsed at rock bottom and soaking wet from the heaviest rain Lima has ever seen, the pretty fall leaves surrounding your beautiful like a gallery painting in the late nineteen hundreds, your deep brown eyes catching mine like they've finally found what they have been searching for all their life, I wouldn't think twice about throwing my arms around your neck and kissing you senseless.

I wouldn't think twice.

And that's how I know I can't talk to you now. Or anytime soon. Not until that feeling goes. Because if you were to do that, it would hurt a thousand times more to have you leave back to _her _and give _her_ the same look and _her _the same feelings and _her_ the same smile.

Or, rather, it would hurt a million times more, because a thousand, to me, sounds too romantic. And however much you miss it and however much you think I'm still going to give it to you, you don't deserve my romance. Not from me, anyway.

I want you, Santana. I want absolutely everything about you. I want you in the twenties, the thirties, the forties, the fabulous fifties, the swinging sixties. I want your disco in the seventies, your rock and roll in the eighties and I want your carelessness in the nineties. Most of all, I want your now. I want the way you worry your bottom lip between the tips of your teeth when you want to say something but you don't know how. I want the way you throw your head back when something makes you laugh like crazy and then come swinging back over, still giggling and still smiling. I want the way you scrunch up your nose when I tell you you're beautiful. I want the way one of your eyes squints more than the other when you grin. I want the way you walk like a penguin when you're in a good mood about something and I want the way you always doodled a smiley face on my arms if you ever had a pen in your hand.

I want everything I will never let myself have.

Does she kiss you the way I used to kiss you? Does she make you smile the way I used to make you smile? Does she giggle like I used to giggle? Do you touch her the way you used to touch me? Do you tell her you love her the way you used to tell me you loved me? Do you lie there staring at her the way you used to lie there staring at me?

I'm sitting here, coated in a layer of fresh sweat from dancing out my temptation, thinking all these questions and wondering why I never reach an answer. The way you looked at me was a question I wanted to spend my whole life answering, and I will not hide that. I could see it all with you, Santana. I could see my whole life turn into _'ours' _and all the different things that _we _would own.

Maybe now is not our time. Maybe we were always meant to fall in love but we were never meant to be together. I know that I will never love anyone else the way I love you – after all, you may love again, but _"never the same love twice." _

(You told me that.)

Remember.

I will move on, I know I will. I'll find someone who's willing to wait until the next time they see me, however long that may be. I'll find someone to help babysit my younger brother and lay on the couch all night watching Disney movies. I'll find someone else who will wrap their arms around my tummy whilst I cook them Sunday lunch and whisper in my ear how I'm "the most perfect girlfriend in the whole universe."

I'll find someone else. Much like you've already found yours.

But I won't stop waiting for you. I've told you before and I'll tell you again. You can forget about me for the rest of your life, until we're ancient and knocking on God's door. But I'll always wait to see you again, however difficult it will be.

There's so much more I want to tell you. But I guess it's not important if I can't remember them all right now.

I love you, Santana, and I always will. But right now, time is my best friend, and you need to respect that. Please don't send me anything more from New York. Not your words, your love, or any part of your heart. If you really love me, you'll find a way to realise how it only hurts my heart more.

Because I'll never have all of your heart.

I hurt, Santana. And maybe things will change in the future – a large part of me really wants that. But for now, I'll just keep missing you, like I'll always hope you're missing me.

**Sorry for the angst, kids! I see hope for Brittana, and I'm pretty sure they'll pull through. Poppy x**


End file.
